I am not a good photographer and wasted half of each roll of film with bad shots. Now that I have a digital camera, I have filled my album with beautiful shots that has family members oooing and aaaaing. What's my secret? Simple. I take lots of photos. I experiment with different angles, even ones that look strange. I don't ask my subjects to pose, I just whip out the camera and start shooting. Digital photos cost nothing to take. If it doesn't come out the way you like, erase it and try again. But I have learned that digital cameras do not work exactly the same as film cameras and it helps to know the difference.
I leave the camera in the automatic mode. I do not try to adjust shutter speed, focus, etc.
Most cameras come factory set to shut down in a minute in order to save the battery. I have found this to be a problem. I turn on the camera, look for something to photograph, frame the subject and the camera turns off as I am about to shoot. So I have adjusted it to the maximum of a three-minute shutdown. It is rare while shooting not to touch some button or make some adjustment every three minutes.
Most cameras also come preset turn the display on immediately and to NOT display a preview photograph. The display wastes a lot of power, so I would like it to be off by default. Yet when I take a shot, I would like to see immediately how it came out. So (where possible) I recommend that you set the display off by default and the preview on by default. Now the screen stays off except for a few seconds after you take a photo so you can view it.
Photo quality settings: most digital cameras allow you to choose the settings of photo quality. 1.3 megapixel work well in photo sizes up to 3 X 5. If you plan on printing larger photos, you want better than 1.3 megapixel images. Each high resolution photo will take a megabyte or more of media storage.If you only have a small memory card, like the original 8 mb or 16 mb that comes with the camera, you will quickly fill it up.
You can set the camera to a lower resolution and get more photographs, but you do sacrifice quality. If the resolution is over a megabyte, you won't be sacrificing quality noticeably at 4 X 6. However, if you want to crop these photos, the quality of the smaller size image does degrade rapidly. To change the image quality, press the tiny button that looks like an arrow to the left and a few dots on the right. You will see a number in the LCD display. With an 8 mb smartmedia card installed, that number will vary from a low of 8 to a high over possibly over a hundred. The lower the number, the higher resolution the image. For photos to be used for auction images or downloaded to the web, you can go about 4 times the number of meg on the card (32 for an 8 mb card). For family photos, don't go below twice the size (16 for an 8 mb card).
You should buy the card that will give you the maximum number of photos you ever intend to shoot at one time. For example, if you are a hobbyist who shoots a few family photos for a birthday or special event, 8 mb may be all you need. If you're planning to go to on vacation or a wedding and maybe take more photos, you may need a bigger card. When buying the card, do NOT count the one that came with the camera as part of the deal. For example, if you want to take 24 high resolution photos, do not buy an 16mb card and tell yourself you will fill one up, remove it and put in the 8mb that came with the camera. These cards are delicate and not really meant for constant handling. Buy a card of the right size so you can leave it in the camera permanently. The difference in price is miniscule.
Don't hurry - unlike film cameras, digital cameras need extra time to record the image. The lenses usually have a shorter tolerance and needs better focusing. Don't be in a hurry to snap. You frame your subject in the center of the lens, press the button halfway and wait for the green light, then press the button the rest of the way. A zoom lens has to focus relative to where the lens has been zoomed. This takes an extra fraction of a second. You generally hear a series of clicks and then the green light comes on. When I moved from a non zoom camera to a zoom model, I didn't wait long enough and my first shots were either too dark or out of focus.
Use the flash - digital cameras need more light than film cameras. One of my mistakes was that I left the flash off outdoors. Even in sunlight, there was a sharp contrast when shadows fell on someone's face, which almost always happens unless your subject is staring into the sun. Leave the flash on even outdoors.
Shoot on an angle - the flash has a tendency to reflect back. Red eye is one of the symptoms, it is simply the flash reflecting off someone's eyes. When shooting near reflective surfaces such as windows, jewelry, metallic items, it is best to shoot at a slight angle so the reflection does not go back to the camera. Incidentally, you can fix red eye with many of the photo editing programs available. The best I found for fixing red eye was from Serif (www.serif.com) called Photoplus 7 for 9.95.
Get close- Remember that the flash of a digital is weaker than the external flashes you can attach to a regular camera. It only works up close. You can use the zoom lens to focus on someone twenty feet away, but if it is an indoor shoot in poor lighting, the flash will not reach that far. It is always best to get as close to the subject as possible.
Center the main object - here is another common mistake. You are photographing two people, so you center the picture with one person on either side. This means that you are focusing on the space between the two people. The camera will focus on the object in this space. Suppose there is a wall twenty feet beyond them. You will get a nice shot of the wall but your subjects may be out of focus. There are two ways to handle this. Either shoot the image so that it is NOT centered by putting one subject in the center. You can always crop it later. Or put one subject in the center and press the button halfway. When the green light comes on, you are focused on the correct distance. Without releasing the button, move the camera so the subjects are centered and complete the shot.
Alkaline batteries get eaten very quickly. Even though they are cheaper to buy, you are wasting money, not to mention resources, if you use these. Good rechargeable batteries are only $2 each and can be recharged hundreds of time. They also last about 3 times longer than alkalines.
Always keep the batteries fully charged. Older batteries had a problem. If you let them run down for ten minutes and then recharged them, they had a "memory." They would now only last for ten minutes. Therefore they had to be completely discharged before being recharged. Good rechargeable batteries do not have this problem. Recharge the batteries after every use. Buy a spare set of high quality rechargeable batteries or use an external power pack.
Downloading: If you have a newer PC with USB ports, this is the fastest and easiest way to download. If you dont have USB ports but have a desktop computer with Windows 98 or better, you can buy a card with 2 USB ports for about $30. This is a very useful item to have. A lot of the newer printers and scanners use the USB port. If you have a laptop, then buy a PCMCIA adaptor. Otherwise you will have to get a floppy disk card adaptor.
The easiest way to download: I don't use the included program for downloading. I have an easier method. When you set the camera to PC mode (the snaking, two-headed arrow on the Toshiba), your PC detects it and adds another drive to your drive list. Go to My Computer, Windows Explorer or any file manager program. You will see an additional drive on your list. Click on this drive and you will see a directory. You may have to click on another subdirectory but you will eventually come to a list of files that end in a number and have the extension JPG. These are the actual photo images. Click on Edit-Select All (or Ctrl-A) to select all the files. Click on Edit-Cut (or Ctrl-X) to copy these images to the clipboard. Then switch to whatever directory you want for processing the images. I use My Documents\My Photos. Then hit Edit-Paste (or Ctrl-V). The images are now copied from the card to the directory chosen. When the copying has finished, the images will be erased from the camera.
Next I load my photos into a photo editing program. If all a photo needs is cropping or some slight adjustments to the brightness, I do it right there. If it has red eye, I use the Serif program to get rid of it.
Cropping is removing unwanted portions of a photo. You got a great shot of your kids at the park, along with another family you really don't need. Crop them out and you can now print a 4 X 6 photo where your kids will be the only subjects. You must take care when cropping a photo that you do it proportionally. A photo should be measured with a ration of 2:3 as in 4 X 6. If you cut out just the sides and wind up with a 4 X 4, it will not print well if you send it to a service. You will either wind up with a 6 X 4 with lots of white space or they will attempt to correct the size and in blowing it up, someone might get pushed right off the image. While you are cropping your image, you draw a rectangle of the area you wish to keep. The software shows you the number of pixels you are keeping as in 800,1200. Make sure that these numbers are close to a 2:3 ratio.
Whether or not you crop your photos, you should save them as JPG with low compression (20% or less compression). A 5 megabyte BMP photo can be saved as a 500k JPG photo with little if any noticeable loss of detail. I save my photos that I am working on as BMP at first because I want it as sharp as possible until the final version is saved. Once I have a final version, I don't need the photo to take up 5 megabytes when it can be compressed to under a meg without problem.
Printing photos: I get my best results from the Epson 6-color printer (750, 820, 785, 875) on glossy photo paper. However, glossy photo paper is expensive, about 40 cents or so per sheet. I get excellent results on coated photo paper (15 cents a sheet). While not as thick and shiny as the glossy, the images are still sharp and clear. I put these pages into plastic sheets which I then insert in an album. You can also get very good results from a lower Epson (660, 860, 777 for under $100) but these are 4-color printers and the 6-color printers have even smaller dots. For photo enthusiasts, Epson's newest lines with special long-lasting 6 color ink and 2880 dpi is the line to look at (785, 820, 875). Epson ink cartridges are expensive, but I have gotten excellent results with a compatible brand that sells for less than half.
Other software - Kai's Super Goo lets you distort photos, switch noses, etc. Lots of fun, particularly for kids. Printmaster lets you create posters and greeting cards with your photos.
Just for fun - visit the Kodak web site Kodak Site. They have software on line that lets you distort your photos, put your child's face on a cartoon character and so on. The resulting images are somewhat disappointing in resolution and you can do a better job if you use Photo Impact or Picture Publisher, but the Kodak site is fun and very easy.
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